Alabama woman suing over student debt robocalls

A Chambers County woman is suing student loan corporation Sallie Mae for damages after she says the company called her more than 200 times attempting to collect on student loans.

The seven-page lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern Division of the Middle District of Alabama, says the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) as the woman requested the calls to stop. The TCPA regulates telemarketing and automated telephone systems.

The plaintiff is identified as a graduate of Columbus State University in Georgia and a special education teacher in Tallapoosa County. She claims in the suit that Sallie Mae used an automatic telephone dialing system, which has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called.

The suit states the plaintiff instructed callers last October to stop calling her cell phone number “as she could not afford to make her payments and did not wish to receive further telephone calls.” Even then, the suits states she continued to receive calls up to three times a day.

Frank Kerney, an attorney for Morgan & Morgan representing the plaintiff, said the robocalls were not only “illegal, they’re cruel.”